Carjacking

Prosecutors have declined to file charges against a former Southern California basketball player who was arrested Sunday on suspicion of carjacking. The district attorney's office filed a document Tuesday that said investigators had insufficient evidence to charge Stais Boseman, 35. Deputy Dist. Atty. James Prudhomme said police were unable to contact the alleged victim and her boyfriend, who gave police bogus phone numbers. Prudhomme said the alleged victim was in the car with her boyfriend when Boseman allegedly jumped into the vehicle and drove off. Prosecutors said Boseman had agreed to drop the boyfriend's $20 debt to him if he could use the car. Boseman played briefly for the Houston Rockets.

A 41-year-old Colorado woman shot in the chest during an attempted carjacking in the drive-through lane of a fast-food restaurant in Ontario was herself arrested by police on Thursday after drugs and weapons were found in her truck, authorities said. Ontario Police Detective Mike Macias identified the victim-turned-suspect as Josephine L. Coulter, 41, of Colorado Springs.

Police arrested a 22-year-old man shortly after a carjacking and brutal attack on a couple in Sherman Oaks, the second such incident to occur on the same block in as many months. Joseph Navar Downey was being held in the Monday night assault of a man and a woman that began in a parking lot on a block crowded with restaurants and other businesses, police said. The incident began around 9:30 p.m.

A Walnut liquor store owner who was pushed out of his sport utility vehicle at Ontario International Airport by a carjacker became entangled in his seat belt and was dragged for more than two miles to his death, authorities said. More than 40 people watched helplessly as Seok Young Rhee, 55, struggled to cling to the side of his Chevrolet Suburban as the carjacker sped down Airport Drive on Monday evening, authorities said. Witnesses shouted and screamed at the driver to stop.

Sheriff's homicide detectives arrested two men and are looking for two brothers in connection with three homicides and two other shootings, including a carjacking that left an off-duty Ontario policeman wounded, authorities said Wednesday. Riverside County Sheriff's Investigator Harry Sawicki said the four men are all believed to be linked to the spate of shootings. The two still at large are considered armed and dangerous, authorities said.

A Feb. 3 hearing has been set to determine if a 16-year-old boy charged with the murder and attempted carjacking of an Orange County man should be tried as an adult. Alan Peterson, 62, was attacked Nov. 14 in front of a Jack in the Box restaurant on Avalon Boulevard in Carson. According to Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and the district attorney's office, Peterson had stopped at the restaurant when the defendant tried to carjack him, then shot him at point-blank range. The suspect's name has not been released because he is a juvenile.

An Anaheim man involved in one of the county's first fatal carjackings was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without possibility of parole. Scott E. Rembert, 23, was convicted in Orange County Superior Court after his third trial ended in April. Rembert was convicted last year of kidnaping, but two juries deadlocked on the murder charge and a special-circumstance allegation that a robbery also occurred. During brief remarks at his sentencing, Rembert apologized to the family of victim Joseph Andrew Kondrath, a college student who was forced into the trunk during the 1992 carjacking and later shot in the head as he pleaded for his life.

OAKLAND -- The California Highway Patrol late Wednesday afternoon canceled an Amber Alert after Oakland police determined the suspect in the alleged carjacking and kidnapping knew the purported victims. They also learned the girl in the car, who earlier was described as a 13-year-old, is an adult and was not taken against her will. Authorities earlier identified Roy McCamey, a 54-year-old African American man, as a person of interest in connection with the incident, which occurred at an Oakland Safeway in the 4100 block of Redwood Road about 12:50 p.m. Tuesday.

This letter is in regard to two articles that were written last week in your newspaper: "U.S. Rushes to Reassure Japan After Carjacking" (March 29) and "Another PR Nightmare for O.C.'s Tourist Trade" (March 30). I am particularly interested in the use of extreme and rash terms to describe the events surrounding the carjacking/killing of Takuma Ito and Go Matsuura: slaying, shock, frantic, gun-infested, outrage, vicious. This is nothing more than the usual media ploy to hype and embellish the truth, to manipulate the events so that they occur in the minds of the public exactly how the media would like them to be seen.

May 30, 2012 | By Kim Murphy, This post has been updated. Please see note at bottom for details.

SEATTLE -- Seattle was paralyzed at midday Wednesday by two shootings that occurred within half an hour of each other in two of the city's most congested areas, sparking massive manhunts for what initially appeared to be two different suspects. The first shooting occurred about 11 a.m. at a popular cafe near the University of Washington. An unidentified gunman opened fire on five people, killing two of them and critically wounding the others. Half an hour later, a woman was shot and killed in an apparent carjacking in downtown Seattle in a parking lot near the city's Town Hall lecture center.